You may have seen some intricate polymer clay work around which has detailed images or patterns embedded in the clay and wondered, ‘is that painted on?’, ‘how do you do that?’. This technique is called millefiori, here’s its dictionary definition:
mil.le.fi.o.ri
–noun
| decorative glass made by fusing multicolored glass canes together, cutting them crosswise, joining them into new groups, embedding the groups in transparent glass, and blowing the resultant mass into a desired shape. |
Also, mil.le.fi.o.re.
Origin:
1840–50; < It, equiv. to mille thousand (< L) + fiori, pl. of fiore < L fl?ri- (s. of fl?s) flower
1840–50; < It, equiv. to mille thousand (< L) + fiori, pl. of fiore < L fl?ri- (s. of fl?s) flower
Here is a picture of some of my millefiori cane work:
Canes are created by rolling long tubes of clay and forming them into shapes. Clay is packed around the shape to hold it in place. This is similar to the way they make lollies with names and logos in the center at places like Roc Candy. As you can see, my canes are tiny, usually no bigger than a few centimeters across. Many people make canes the size of a dinner plate, like this one.
There are many great tutorials on-line for how to make the cane but this is where I started, on Heather’s Over The Rainbow tute. It was seeing this while visiting her site to buy jewelery findings that I got the polyclay bug.
After creating your canes you can make all sorts of things with them such as is seen in these photos;
Pendants
Beads
Earrings
Earrings
Earrings
Caning can be a challenge but once mastered its very rewarding. Why don’t you have a go?
Hey, thess are cool! I love the little car one – so clever! I bet it is rewarding, it must be so exciting to slice them and see how they turn out!
[...] really enjoy making canes. If you want to know what a cane is, pop over to my other blog where I wrote a post explaining them. Knowing how amazing some caners are I know that I’m not brilliant at it but [...]